Fire Vessel
In game Overall strategy Pack an old ship or odd bit of floating junk with enough combustible material, set it alight, and pray that it floats into a vast concentration of enemy timber — that is the quintessental tactical thought behind the Fire Vessel. As most ships are built from Timber, it thus makes sense to use fire to burn and sink them, before they can bring the full weight of their guns to train themselves upon your assets. And apparently, the old trick never fails, except in some cases. The first case we speak of here is enemy light and medium shipping. Medium shipping, while an easy target is often more resistant to their attacks, while the light escort craft your enemy may use such as Galleys and Yachts can work superbly at fending off Fire Vessels (or at least die trying) as they have very good speed and low cost, meaning that you can amass a massive number of them to fend off Fire Vessels. Additionally, don't think of using Fire Vessels to take out enemy Busses or Transports as they are not cost-effective for the job, and they certainly cannot be used to destroy the enemy Harbours, making Harbours ideal places to lay up heavy ships until the coastal fortifications kick in, as may enemy artillery on the shore. For this reason, Fire Vessels are best used as support, either in a defensive role to protect Harbours from getting blasted by enemy cannon shot, or for softening up enemy fieets in open water before engaging them, although in real life this would be very, very difficult to do. Fire Vessels are very powerful if used against early shipping, especially against units such as Galleasses and Galleons, but can do very little damage against larger and more modern vessels like the Frigate or Ship of the Line later in the game. Unit summary *Weak-hulled ship, but with powerful steam propulsion and extremely powerful carronade guns. Notes In Rise of Napoleon, this unit gets an upgrade called the ''Hellebrander'', which can be recruited by the Netherlands . History Because Early Modern shipping continued to be built primarily of combustible materials (wood, cloth, hemp, and pitch), fire was a devastating weapon against them. Ancient mariners devised several ways to set enemy ships on fire. The simplest was to fire flaming arrows or ballista bolts on an enemy ship. Next most useful were flaming grenades, something like modern Molotov cocktails, filled with a combustible liquid like oil. Most intricate were flaming firepots suspended from the bow of a ship by a pole. When the pole was positioned over the deck of an enemy ship, the pot was dropped, shattering it and spread burning liquid over the deck. A more intricate and ingenious manner of destroying enemy ships was devised by the Syrian engineer and arms manufacturer, Hassan ar-Rammah, near the beginning of the 14th century CE. The Arab text Liber Ignis (or rather, the Kitab Al-Furusiyya wa Al-Manasib Al-Harbiyya) describes a weapon which he called "the egg which moves itself and burns", which was a metal shell containing flammable material propelled by a rocket utilising explosive material. Unfortunately, the industrial capacities of Islamic civilisation prevented making these weapons in sufficient numbers, and so the "burning egg" of ar-Rammah eventually slunk into obscurity, whilst the use of old boats as wooden bombs, packed either with oil, naphtha, or gunpowder, continued unabated until the mid-19th century. Category:Light ships Category:Fireships